Coward
by FreeWrite
Summary: Some people call me a coward, but they've never seen what I've seen.


**Title: **Coward

**Author: **FreeWrite

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Stargate: Atlantis, nor do I own Harry Potter. People much more creative and better off than I are the owners. I promise not to make any money from them and put them back where I got them from.

**Authors Note: **I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire tonight (good movie but not as good as the book), I've seen many fics where Harry walks away from the Wizarding world after the final battle but I got to thinking what if it's not Harry that walks away but someone else. Hence this fic was written at 1am on a Sunday morning.

**Summary:** Some people call me a coward, but they haven't seen what I've seen

Some call me a coward.

They're the ones who never saw what I saw.

They're the ones who never had a reason to walk away.

I did.

Still to this day I hear the screams of both my friends and enemies, I see blood pouring out of wounds caused by my own hand. I see the eyes of children who had to grow up to fast, my eyes and the eyes of my friends. We who were given no other choice but to fight.

I walked away.

Now days everyone knows that I harbour no love for the Military, or Military solutions. I am first and foremost a diplomat, a negotiator, but none of them have ever asked me why. Why I will do anything to avoid violence, why I have spent the last 18 years of my life working towards peace.

Not that I would tell them even if they did ask.

I wouldn't tell them that I grew up in a war. That I saw friends and family die fighting for their right to live before my very eyes.

That at the age of 17 I lost my blood innocence.

I guess you could say that it was killing a person that was my undoing. I can honestly say that there was no love lost between the two of us. He had spent the previous six years tormenting me and my friends, but I never wished him dead. It came down to a choice, take his life or let him kill my best friends sister.

I killed him.

I never thought that those words would leave my lips. I vowed never to say them again.

I'm about to break that vow.

Here I am millions of miles away from home and 18 years after I left it all behind.

I know they tried to find me after I apparated away from that blood soaked field, but they never did. Every time one of them would show up at the family home my parents would let me know after they had sent whoever had turned up this time away.

I have created a whole new life for myself. A new identity, a fake birth certificate, passport and social security number, false school records and a charm to change my accent later and Elizabeth Weir showed up at Yale to study international Law.

For years I have been hiding, behind the scenes using the only weapon I'll allow myself these days, my words, to effect change. To stop fighting, end the need for war and do my damndest to try and end violent conflict.

It may sound cliché but up until a year ago all I really did want was world peace.

Then I found out about the Stargate program, and 6 months later I'm standing in front of the gate ready to go through it to another galaxy. I've been running for years, maybe now I'll be far enough away to forget.

But I'll never forget.

For as long as I can remember now I've been having nightmares watching as every person I ever knew and cared for fell one by one at HIS hand. Now they've changed instead of them falling in a flash of green light, their life is sucked out of them, I am forced to watch as one by one they are tortured and die. There are more of them then ever before as the faces of my past and present meld together.

Maybe that's why I distance myself from the members of my expedition. In them I see people who are either long dead or probably think I'm dead by now. A boy with messy hair who really wants nothing more than to be no-one special, a friend who has the biggest heart and when it comes down to the crunch will do anything for his loved ones, the little sister, always in the background watching everything but never really being seen. Maybe these are qualities that you could find in everyone but some nights the similarities are so obvious I can do nothing more than lie in my bed and cry myself to sleep.

There are Wraith all through the city I am running from the chair room to the control room when one beams down in front of me. As I skid to a stop I loose my balance and end up falling flat on my arse. The sound of stuttering gunfire behind me causes me to turn and see Carson standing there gun in hand clip empty. My vision swims and for a moment I would swear I'm looking up at Neville Longbottom.

The Wraith didn't even stumble.

Carson looks down at me and I know he's out of ammunition, and I'm out of options. No one will be coming to our rescue, we're on our own.

Once again I'm faced with the choice of taking a life or letting a friend die. Reaching down I lift the hem of my pants slightly and pull my wand from where it has sat for many years. Just in case.

I wonder if Avada Kedavra works on a Wraith.

For the second time in my life I Hermione Granger cast the killing curse.

Some people call me a coward.

Maybe I am and maybe I'm not.

They're the ones that spent years refusing to say his name, years sitting safe in their homes criticizing the ministry, my friends, myself.

They never saw what I saw,

They never lost a part of their soul in a flash of green light.

**End**


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